3 versus 1
by All-I-need
Summary: Patrick Jane contemplates the important role the number 3 plays in his life and the fact that sometimes less is more. - dark and angsty, happy end is questionable. You have been warned.


Hello there! This is another introspective little oneshot about our favorite Mentalist. And this time, it really _is_ short. English is not my first language so I apologize for any mistakes I might have made. I think I caught them all while proofreading, but you never know, right? Comments and constructive critizism are always welcome. Enjoy!

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><p><strong>3 vs. 1<strong>

_Three._

If you asked Patrick Jane which number played the most important role in his life, that would be his answer.

For example, he had spent three months in a locked room after the murder of his wife and daughter. Three weeks after his release from the hospital he had buried them.

But what was most important was that at the moment he held a gun in his hands, a gun which contained exactly three bullets.

Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe some sick joke of the universe, but what it came down to was the fact that Patrick Jane, former fake psychic, former husband and former father, had been sitting between the graves of his wife and daughter for exactly three days.

His thoughts were filled with numbers, dates, facts, and the number three seemed to be mocking him. It was the only remaining constant in his miserable excuse for a life. That, and the gun in his hands.

He had been three years old when his mother left the family for god-knows-where with god-knows-whom. He`d never seen her again and he didn`t want to, either.

When he met Angela Ruskin for that fateful very first time, he`d been planning his suicide for three days. It had been a simple plan. Cut his wrists, then jump off a bridge. Simple. Easy. There had been nothing and no one to hold him back - until he locked eyes with that honeyblonde girl across the room and found himself unable to look away. His simple plan had suddenly seemed much more complicated. In fact, it had seemed way too complicated to go through with it. Simple suddenly had a new meaning. Simple suddenly meant getting up from where he sat and walking over to that girl, offering her a drink and a smile, along with the promise of easy conversation.

They`d run away together three months later, sneaking out at night and stealing a car to get away as fast and far as possible. They had never looked back, never regretted their flight for even a minute.

True to form, they´d gotten married on the third of March, enjoying their own twisted little numeral joke that no one else would have understood.

Of course, it didn`t stop there. When Angela found out that she was pregnant, they`d been married for exactly three years and three months. Maybe they should`ve suspected something then, should have guessed that _three_ was a special number in their lives. Frankly, they´d been too occupied with buying a house (which - of course - cost three million dollars) and all the other things that went with having a child.

Everything went downhill exactly nine years after their wedding. Three times three. Of course that number would come back to haunt them some day. And come it had, in the form of a certain maniac serial killer.

Unbeknownst to him, Jane had gotten home that night exactly three hours after Red John left, only to find his family dead and his life shattered. Three became one, the saddest number of all.

They`d never gotten around to having those three children they had always dreamed of.

And now, after three months in a locked room and three weeks of preparing a funeral to bury his life, he was holding a gun containing three bullets to his head.

Making his psychologist think he was fine had been a piece of cake once he`d gotten his wits together. That in itself had been the problem. Grief, pain and guilt had taken their toll on him. In the end he had managed to pull himself together by plotting his revenge. Red John had become his goal, killing him his sole purpose for still existing. He`d managed to get out of the hospital with this one thing in mind.

Who would`ve thought burying his family would throw him right back into the black abyss he´d just escaped from all over again? Sophie Miller certainly hadn`t. Otherwise, she would have never suggested to wait with the funeral until he was fit to attend it, to help him get some closure. The only thing it had brought him was more grief, more guilt, more pain. He hadn`t thought that was even possible, but he`d been wrong before.

So now here he sat, contemplating his life, what was left of that life and how easy it would be to end it. Finally, he had decided to let fate decide. The gun had room for seven bullets, but only held three. He had put them in with his eyes closed, never actually touching the gun so he wouldn`t know in which order the magazine held them.

This was important because he intended to pull the trigger three times. If he was still alive after those three tries, he`d continue with his life for the sole purpose of finding Red John and killing him for what he`d done to Angela and Charlotte.

Taking one last deep breath, he pressed the muzzle to his temple.

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><p>Exactly nine years, three months, nine weeks and three days later Patrick Jane killed his nemesis Red John with three shots, fired at close range at the coffee stand of a shopping mall, using the very same bullets that had almost led to his premature death at the graves of his family.<p>

As he sat in his holding cell that very same night, he thought to himself that yes, three was indeed the most important number in his life, but one was the lonely number and therefore hardest to find. Which was the reason he`d only hidden one small capsule under his tongue...

**END.**


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